Happy New Year
By Akhilleus
Well, happy new year to all RC denizens.
The celebration of the new year has been in effect for several millennia. Fatty and his hateful supporters would be astounded to know that festivals of the new year were first celebrated (at least as far as we know--there could have been some Cro-Magnon whoop-de-doos that have failed to make the history books) in Mesopotamia, present day Iraq.
Like most ancient tribes, Romans finagled some sort of new years day around the beginning of March, close to the Vernal Equinox. Romans, some time around the middle of the second century CE, began celebrating on January 1st, not from any religious or agricultural basis, but purely out of political expedience. New consuls were sworn in on that date, so...
And, as always, at some point, religion takes its pound of flesh. In the early Middle Ages, at the Second Council of Tours in 567, New Years Day (January 1) was abolished. Sort of like how the church abolished things like scientific astronomy (damn that Galileo!). Anyway, they were probably pissed at all the football games and Bud Light commercials. (I know I've had just about enough of that "dilly-dilly" bullshit.)
It's instructive to recall that in 567, bishops could still be married. Bet that would have cut down on the child molestation that took root after celibacy (*wink-wink*) was insisted upon.
Anyway, by the end of the Middle Ages, western cultures were deep into the cult of Gaius Lombardus, medieval band leader. It took another few hundred years for Robbie Burns to put words to the tune of Auld Lang Syne and for Gaius to start his New Years Eve radio appearances.
But in any event, let us all join hands in front of that wonderful hearth set for us by our gentle host, Robbie's ancestor Marie, and sing together:
And there's a hand, my trusty fiere!
and gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak' a right gude-willie waught,
for auld lang syne.
And there's a hand my trusty friend!
And give me a hand o' thine!
And we'll take a right good-will draught,
for auld lang syne.
Not sure how we all handle the "gude-willie waught" with hands joined, but perhaps we'll figure that out by eve's end.
Love you all, my brothers and sisters! Happy 2019.
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Reader Comments (3)
And lots of that love back atcha––YOU, who gives us so much to read about, to laugh about, and a whole lot of food for thought.
"For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of Kings & old unhappy far-off things and battles long ago."
@Akhilleus: One of the many great advantages to growing old is finding out stuff you couldn't figure out or didn't know when you were young.
I never thought I was related to Robert Burns. My family name was O'Beirne, not Burns, and family lore has it that a U.S. customs agent changed the name to Burns when my ancestors landed here in the 1860s. We're Irish, not Scottish.
But I did think I had a connection to the poet on my mother's side of the family. My ancestor James Metivier owned the English-language newspaper on the Isle of Jersey. This much is true. According to Mom, Robert Burns' two widowed (or spinster) sisters lived on Jersey, & when James Metivier found out they were impoverished, he used his paper to publicize their plight & raise funds to help them. In gratitude, the sisters gave Metivier Robert Burns' tortoise-shell snuff box, which my sister still has.
So I thought I'd tell that story in response to your comment above, and to help authenticate it, I used the Googles to try to find out which of Burns' sisters might have lived on Jersey. It turns out that would be none of them. Furthermore, my family story is completely fanciful; Robert Burns lived nearly a century before James Metivier, and unless the sisters lived to the age of at least 150, Metivier couldn't have helped them out. Burns had 12 children, but even they would have been too old to have been the recipients of Metivier's gesture, and there's no evidence any of them lived on Jersey anyway. Grandchildren? Possible, but who knows?
Family stories are, um, stories.
Marie,
I knew your family was Irish but all the best writers steal from other good writers (I’ve swiped many a finely wrought phrase from our RC siblings) and make shit up like there’s no tomorrow, or yesterday, even.
Two of my favorite literary companions are the duo of Keats and Chapman, a pairing enabled with fertile drollery through the fabrications of Myles na Gopaleen, also known as Flann O’Brien, but born Brian O’Nolan (plenty of additional fabricating there, eh what?). As natural as the pair seems together, they could not, of course, have punned away in their uniquely jocular idiom in real life, being separated by some 150 years. But leave us not stand on ceremony dealing with such trivial matters where art and good stories are concerned.
Your narrative is an excellent one! I was especially taken with the detail of the snuff box. Such particulars are mother’s milk to the best tales. Rather than banish it to the family attic, I’d embellish the crap out of it. Maybe your ancestors actually did know Burns. Perhaps one of them even suggested that he write a poem about times gone by and prompted him to call it “Auld Lang Syne”. There ya go. As pretty a piece of embezzled eminence as one could wish for this fine bright first morning of the new year.
Ah well, where would we be without our imaginations? T’would be a sad world for sure.
Me, I’m imagining a nation without Trumps.
Ahhhhh...sure now, don’t wake me up while I’ve a smile on me face.